SOS Bushmen

SINCE 1996 we have regularly charted the tragic and shocking saga of the Botswanan government's forcible eviction of the last Bushmen from their ancestral homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, fully supported by British ministers and the EU.

Initially the EU threatened to withdraw aid from Botswana unless persecution of the Bushmen was halted, but it was persuaded by our Foreign Office to back an eviction policy enforced by torture and shootings.

Last December, the Bushmen won a historic legal victory, thanks in part to the London-based campaigning body Survival International. Botswana's high court ruled that the evictions were illegal and in breach of a constitutional guarantee given them (at British insistence) when the country became independent in 1966. The court further ruled that the Bushmen must be allowed access to water and to continue their traditional hunter-gathering.

Since then the Botswanan government has consistently flouted the court's judgment, denying the Bushmen water and the right to hunt, and forcibly preventing most of them from returning home. Not a peep of protest from the Foreign Office, which has also over the years echoed Botswana's denials that part of its motive for forcing out the Bushmen was to permit diamond mining in the reserve.

It has just been announced that a pounds 2 million diamond mine is planned for the reserve, backed by the Botswanan government - and presumably our Foreign Office.